A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing the story has begun. Or does he?

Perhaps. Maybe.

What if the story begins in the middle of yet another story? And what if you are that boy?

What would occur if you were to skip back to the beginning. Can reexperiencing it somehow influence what happens next?

What does happen next?

I don’t know. But I do know that this is not where the story begins or ends. This is only where it changes.

Pondering this, I return to my engagement with reality, my immediate surroundings – the once familiar, now foreign setting of an airport, nearly deserted. Passengers adrift, floating zephyr-like amid their own stories as they briefly and gently collide with mine, together creating a confluence of narratives.

From the air I observe the clouds. Always in motion, forever changing. A continuous dance. An endless voyage of forward movement characterized by convergence and disintegration. It makes me think of dreams, of life. Of joy and of anguish.

I think of despair. What is its purpose? Can there exist any utility anywhere in the abyss of hurting? Might it lie with the possibility of transforming it, and ourselves, into something else? Something better?

Is it a point at which the plot of our individual narrative alters? Is it where the story changes?

I don’t know. But I clearly see two paths.

One path that sings silent siren songs for those that seek what lies behind – a blanket of bewilderment under which to cower and hide.

Another path for those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been, but are certain they will arrive.

You have to accommodate your pasts. You have to understand why you went through them. It helps you reflect on what you are now.

D. Bowie

In a matter of hours I am transported back to the beginning of my story. It is as I recall it, as I lived it. I breathe deeply. There is strength here. This is the point from which all possibility is unfurled, where all future potential resides. This is what makes it the beginning. That is its purpose.

I am with my friend, the character that has always been present, to a greater or lesser extent, in every chapter thus far, and always will. Over the following days, we fall back into the cadence and patterns of our earlier years. The ones we cherish. The ones that taught us that there is a difference between those who seek and those who find.

We pedal bikes high into the mountains, we hike deep into ravines. As dusk falls around us, we listen to music while delightedly arguing whether Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust is the finest Bowie album. It is the same argument we had when we were 13. It is the same argument we will have when we are 83. We laugh, we remember. We rejoice.

One evening, I am momentarily mesmerized by the brilliance of the gleaming stars painted upon a clear, dark sky, and I reflect back to all of our yesterdays and tell my friend that our stories have been good ones. Not without adversity or tragedy, but surely imbued with fortune and charm. And for this we are grateful.

Life is akin to a work of art, its moments gathering together obscurely and strangely to form something greater that we can’t quite see because the work is still unfinished.

V. Nabokov

On the final day of this journey to my beginning, I find myself along the scarps, high above the majestic ocean. Standing there on the sharp, poppy-laden cliffs overlooking the ferocity of a rapidly moving tide, I realize completely that I am not just from this place; I am of this place.

This soil, the air, this salt, the water are all part of who I am – of what I have been and always will be. They are the foundation, the fabric of my very essence. You can go home again, because home is inside of you, always – with each beat of the heart and every breath drawn.

I turn backward and face the verdant rolling hills behind me and offer a brief smile of reverence and solemnity. I then turn back to stare upon the vast expanse of the ocean – its seemingly infinite size teeming with possibility and stretching far beyond the limits of my vision.

I know now that this is a moment with meaning. A moment that changes all the moments that will follow.

I know now that the life I’ve left behind has become an ephemeral dream, waiting not to be returned to, but to be forgotten.

It is then and it is there that I take my first step on to the path. And with a heart bursting of hope and a soul blazing of its own incandescence, I move forward and begin to build my new tomorrow – today.